Published 2019. Paperback, 8.5 x 5.5ins, 108pp, £9.95
ISBN 978184861660. [Download a sample PDF from this volume here.]

Like any self-respecting cloud the words of this, Dent’s latest volume, have occasion to slip into and out of focus as well as flit between meanings. To recognise such moments is to ensure we are party to an intrigue more about delight and imagination than dissecting (or, heaven help us, directing) a life. An eye for the weather (physical/mental) is a cannier companion here than any Baedeker or mind that frets. To be fully present within the action of the text is to see that what we’d first interpreted as ‘the finishing line’ was, shockingly, ‘birds migrating’. The mind is vulnerable, matter is contrary, life is in a state of flux. ‘Skip all that tosh about modelling clouds: for every big storm / or soul in torment, I’ve a shedful of u/s machinery.’ This resourceful and energetic new collection acknowledges not just the world we (think we) know but the many and various others. Being here, being reactive to ‘all that is’, is key.

“Peter Dent’s lyrical finesse and attention to the detail of writing is astounding. Somehow the world around him moves onto the page as astute and correct language that evokes, discusses and describes anew. Dent’s world is mysterious and fresh, yet totally familiar and known to us. He is a master of connections, of thought, of words; a true poet.” —Rupert Loydell

“Peter Dent’s recent work, though still engaged in the act of transferring thought into object, has entered a wilder territory where language becomes a balancing act between the pull of wry chaos and the gravity of a stubborn desire to magically remould the world. This is a phenomenology of entertainment where the absurd rulebook of modern life is first rerouted and then rewritten as this thing we call poetry. The detail is subversive. The energy is quietly fizzing.” —Tim Allen

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